AIA Thailand set toupgrade quality of its agents to meet demands of new |generation customers
AIA THAILAND is upgrading the quality of its agency force to “premier agents”, as its key sales channel has to be more efficient and better positioned to serve new-generation customers who are smarter about buying life insurance, Sataya Tepbunterng, gener
“These customers will be asking life-insurance agents whether they have ever been agents at other companies [life insurers], which means they want to buy insurance from a quality agent who can take care of them in the long run.
“These ‘smart’ customers are making the company improve the quality of our agents and embrace a premier-agency training programme to screen their quality,” he said.
New-generation customers will have more understanding of life-insurance products and the income agents receive from the premiums clients pay, so they will select an agent who can take care of them throughout the term of the policy contract, he explained.
Anyone wanting to be an AIA premier agent must be seriously ambitious in the field of life insurance, as they will have to invest much of their time in training with the company, he added.
Those wishing to become premier agents will have to contribute high premiums, have intensive knowledge of insurance – as well as knowledge about the technology used in the sector – and will receive a single licence, the general manager said.
The company uses the “million-dollar round table” (MDRT) level as an indicator of what constitutes a premier agent in terms of business generation. An MDRT agent is someone who contributes first-year premium of Bt2 million-Bt3 million per year.
AIA Thailand currently has 600 MDRT agents, triple the number it had four years ago.
It plans to increase the number of MDRT agents by 1,000 this year, Sataya said.
Last year, AIA Thailand witnessed many agents who were unable to maintain their contracts with the company, a situation which, if allowed to continue, would lead to an increasing bad perception among customers as to its agency channel, said its chief agency officer, Prakitti Boonyakiat.
AIA Thailand, therefore, decided to make 2016 “the year of quality recruitment”, he said.
Prakitti said that to achieve the year-of-quality-recruitment goal, the Thai unit would also build general agents into financial agents and financial agents-prime, operating under a single licence.
The company currently has 200 of the latter and around 3,000 of the former.
Premium contributed by financial agents-prime will be 15-20 per cent higher than that brought in by regular agents, he added.
Sataya said that under the premier-agency programme, AIA Thailand was investing heavily in training each agent.
Although the company is unwilling to reveal the cost, the goal is to upgrade regular agents to premier agents, providing them with stable income and enabling them to look after policyholders throughout their contracts, he explained.
AIA Thailand has around 60,000 agents in total, some 40 per cent of whom are active.
AIA Group’s chief executive officer and president, Mark Tucker, said the focus on quality agents at AIA Thailand would serve future business growth, while supporting AIA Group’s goal of making its Thai unit the domestic market leader in first-year premium.
AIA Thailand currently ranks second in this respect.
